


Glow

by athenasdragon



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Blood, Chicken Soup, F/M, Kissing, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Polish Mythology, Post-Canon, Sickfic, Winter Solstice, it's been like 5 years and these dorks still can't communicate effectively, the wood - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:44:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13190352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/pseuds/athenasdragon
Summary: A few years after the Wood Queen's defeat, Agnieszka and the Dragon are preparing to go deeper into the Wood than ever before in search of the magical fern flower. Unfortunately, the Dragon falls ill just days before the journey, and Agnieszka must go alone.





	Glow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silverscream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverscream/gifts).



> Written for the 2017 Uprooted Holiday Fic Exchange. Happy holidays, silverscream! I hope you enjoy it. <3

Agnieszka hated enchanting blades. Something about the steel of them felt harsh and impenetrable: there was nowhere for her magic to fit; no way for the metal to grow and mold around the spell. Instead, she based her working around the sound of her knife: the smooth _shik, shik_ as it sliced through carrot after carrot and impacted the wooden table. She tapped her foot to the sound and hummed one of Jaga’s spells, described in her book as one “for rest and recovery.”

Sarkan had wanted her to base the spell around the knife itself, but with his voice gone, all he could do was sit across from her and scowl. He was tinkering with something small and glimmering, his handiwork illuminated by an ornate candelabra that he had brought down from the library. Every now and then he would look across the table, frown at the growing pile of carrots, and cough pathetically before returning to his own work.

Aside from the occasional noise, the evening was peaceful. A large pot bubbled over the fire roaring in the hearth. Agnieszka had strung up the last of the fall’s herbs and mushrooms to dry on garlands that crisscrossed the kitchen’s low ceiling. Offerings from the harvest festival, barely depleted, were piled against one wall—more bountiful each year that the Wood’s blight was over. Apples and pears leant a pleasant crispness to the scents of woodsmoke and broth.

Even the sensation of the spell humming in her nose was enough to relax Agnieszka’s muscles and make her smile. More than half a decade had passed since she and Sarkan had stumbled out of the Wood, singed and exhausted, but they always kept busy. Between Agnieszka’s work unraveling the secrets of the forest and their duties to the Crown, the two of them rarely had the time to sit and enjoy each other’s company.

Tonight they were supposed to be starting off into the Wood in preparation of the fern flower’s blooming. It flowered just two nights a year, once on the Summer solstice and once on the Winter, and the shortest day of the year was just three days away. The flowers, according to the books in Sarkan’s library, were useful for divination and wealth spells.

Their plans had abruptly changed when Sarkan fell ill. Agnieszka had been gleaning in the forest, looking for any last treasures buried beneath the snow, when she had noticed the glow emanating from beneath her glove. It was the bracelet she had crafted, each glass bead connected to a candle of the same color in towns across the Valley. Whenever a candle was lit, the corresponding bead would glow, summoning her to deal with problems ranging from lost cows to found dragonlings. The bead tied to her family’s home in Dvernik was shining a bright emerald green.

Agnieszka cast Sarkan’s travelling spell and lurched into the street outside her childhood home. Inside, she found her mother, hands on hips, and Sarkan, seated next to the fire and wrapped in a great number of blankets.

“I think he was looking for you,” her mother explained upon seeing Agnieszka’s panicked expression, “but he’s ill. I thought I’d better get you to deal with him.”

Sarkan scowled, opened his mouth—probably to protest that he was not a child who needed to be looked after—and promptly doubled over coughing. So Agnieszka breathed a sigh of relief that the emergency was not greater, grabbed his arm, and transported them both back to the Tower.

Now she was preparing enough soup to last him until she returned with the fern flower—a journey she would undertake alone. But for now, for the rest of this evening, they were alone together with no obligations.

Sarkan sniffled rather pathetically and glared daggers at what Agnieszka was doing once more. She swallowed the melody of her spell into her chest so that she could speak. “You seem grumpier than usual.”

He opened his mouth, coughed, and spoke. “It’s cold.” His voice was hoarse and breathless, and it clearly pained him to speak.

“You’re going to make yourself worse if you keep speaking,” Agnieszka admonished him lightly, but she set down her knife and coiled the unfinished end of her spell around it for safekeeping. She leaned across the table, hair spilling forward over her shoulders, and did not miss the way Sarkan’s eyes followed the movement. She kissed his forehead—feverish at the best of times, and now so hot that she couldn’t keep her lips in place for more than a second—and then tapped his nose with her finger, whispering “ _przytstalem_.”

A deep blue scarf appeared around Sarkan’s neck as a matching cloak unfurled at his shoulders. In a matter of seconds, he was wrapped head to toe in woolen outerwear.

“Better?” Sarkan glared at her over the top of the scarf but did not try to speak again. Agnieska smiled sweetly and turned to skim a layer of foam off of the brew that was bubbling over the fire. White bones twirled deep in the pot, and Agnieszka had to resist the urge to cloud the broth by stirring it and cackling like a proper witch.

“If you behave yourself and drink this while I’m gone without enchanting it into anything else, I’ll make you dried mushroom soup when I come back,” she told the now thoroughly-bundled figure across the table. “I can use the cream from Dvernik.” And with that, she retrieved her knife and continued the spell.

It was always tempting to get lost in her workings. The flow of magic was so natural, so intuitive, that it would have been easy to close her eyes and let her humming grow into a chant. Instead, she focused on cutting the carrots into even slices and on the sensation of the knife in her hand.

She was so intent on her work that it was several moments before she realized Sarkan was still glaring at her. Agnieszka rolled her eyes, wrapped up her spell as the finished the carrot she was on, and began scooping the pile of chopped vegetables into a wooden bowl. “What? Too warm now?”

Sarkan tried to speak, but this time he couldn’t even finish a single word before he burst into a fit of coughing. He pulled the scarf down from over his mouth and doubled over, one hand gripping his knee hard enough to turn his knuckles white and the other clutched over his mouth.

Worry shot through Agnieszka’s chest. “Sarkan? Sarkan, are you all right?” She trotted around the table, wiping her hands on her apron, to crouch next to him. “Just breathe, all right? Don’t try to talk anymore. I’ll get you a pen if you need.”

After a few seconds the coughing subsided and Sarkan slumped back in his chair, looking paler than usual. He shot Agnieszka a baleful gaze and nodded.

“All right, I’ll be right back.” Agnieszka started for the stairs, but abruptly turned around and grabbed the bowl of carrots. She dumped it into the pot of broth before jogging back out of the kitchen and upstairs.

In the library, she found a quill, a roll of parchment only half-obscured by notes, and the book on magical woodworking that Sarkan had been working through in the evenings. Back down several coils of the staircase, out into the grand entryway, and down the last cool flight of steps into the kitchen once more, where Agnieszka deposited her findings on the table in front of Sarkan. He had pushed down his scarf to reveal cheeks flushed once more with fever. Agnieszka wished she had chosen to weave her spell into a less time-intensive meal; without being soothed, it was impossible to tell how many more burning flashes Sarkan would have to endure before his fever broke.

_Burning._

While Sarkan gripped the quill in his trembling hand and pulled the parchment towards him, Agnieszka went next door into the cellar to find the large clay jug of cream that was still fresh from Dvernik’s harvest. She dipped a mug into the thick liquid— _iruch, iruch_ —and watched it ooze in to fill the cup about halfway— _iruch, iruch_. She used her finger to wipe a stray drop from the side of the mug and popped it into her mouth. A soft, creamy coolness spread over her tongue and she smiled.

“Drink this,” she instructed, passing Sarkan the mug. He took it without protest and drank deeply.

Agnieszka picked up the parchment he had been scribbling at and found the line where the ink was still fresh and damp: _I don’t like the idea of you seeking the fern flower alone_. She raised an eyebrow at Sarkan, whose flush was already receding under the influence of Jaga’s burn spell. He was too ill even to be furious that she had used a burn spell to ease a fever—and that it had worked. “What’s wrong? Worried I’m going to end up with all the arcane foresight while you spend a few days dozing in front of the fire?”

Sarkan frowned and reached out his hand for the parchment, which Agnieszka obligingly handed over. He scrawled out another line in his cramped, rapid handwriting: _dangerous—all manner of creatures appear to guard it, sometimes other wizards_.

“You think that some imperial enchanter from Rosya is going to duel me for a flower?”

 _Stop being flippant_ , each word underlined by a severe dash.

Agnieszka laughed in spite of herself and smoothed his hair, damp with sweat, with her fingertips. “I’ll be all right, Sarkan. I found Kasia in the forest at the height of the Wood Queen’s power. I’ll tread softly and be back with the flower before anyone even realizes I’m there. All right?”

Sarkan sighed and held up the object he had been so studiously working on earlier. Dangling from a silver chain was a glass pendant, dark blue and shot through with red and orange like fire. He motioned that Agnieszka should put it around her neck, so she did, barely suppressing a grin.

Waving a hand over the table, Sarkan summoned a candle with a few whispered words. It was deep blue like the night—like the necklace. He lit it with a snap of his fingers and the necklace’s bead flared bright where it rested against Agnieszka’s dress.

She ran her fingers over the glass, smiling openly now. “Just like my bracelet! How did you manage that?”

Sarkan’s expression melted from worry to smug approval. He scrawled another note: _Not the same method as yours, but a similar result. Tell it my name_.

“What?”

He underlined the last four words, so Agnieszka shrugged and held the still-glowing bead up to her lips. It looked like a drop of honey in sunlight. “Sarkan.”

The bead flared with more intense light, and Agnieszka thought that it must have damaged her vision because suddenly she was seeing double. Overlaid on top of Sarkan was another version of him, pale, flat, and slightly translucent. When she shook her head to try and clear it, however, the image moved, and when she turned fully around she could still see him watching her intently.

“The illusion spell?” she asked, and Sarkan nodded, then shrugged. He wrote for a long time before sliding her the parchment. He coughed deeply while Agnieszka read and she put a steadying hand on his shoulder, stroking his back with her fingers until he could breathe again.

_It’s a semblance of that spell. Enough stored magic that it shouldn’t drain yours, unless you need to come into the image back to the Tower as you’ve done before—we can speak, and I can light the candle to notify you. It will be useful beyond this journey, I hope._

Agnieszka smoothed her hand over his back and smiled at him. “Good idea. Any way I can cause the candle to illuminate, besides opening the window fully?”

This time the quill paused before Sarkan wrote, _press it to your lips_.

“You want me to kiss it?” Agnieszka laughed again, head thrown back. Despite his renewed flush, this time from embarrassment, and his accompanying scowl, Sarkan had been the one to engineer the spell to function exactly as it did. She threw herself into his lap—a little too hard, if his grunt was anything to go by—and wrapped her arms around him, still laughing. He continued to avoid her gaze. “You love the idea of me out in the Wood, lonely and thinking of you, and kissing this necklace to light that candle here next to you.”

Sarkan reached for the parchment but Agnieszka pushed it away. “I’m sure whatever you’re going to say will ruin this nice moment, so for once you can just be quiet. I think it’s very sweet.”

He glowered at her but sat back, and after a moment he put his arms around her waist, his demeanor suggesting that it was a defeat.

“All right, let’s try it.” Agnieszka licked her fingers and pinched out the candle. Her necklace faded back to darkness. One arm still slung around Sarkan’s neck, she lifted the bead to her lips, eyes locked on his, and kissed it gently.

She could hear the candle behind her flicker into ignition, but she did not see it, because Sarkan had leaned forward to press his lips to hers. He was still feverish, but he was no longer uncomfortable to touch. They kissed lazily for a long minute, Agnieszka still perched in his lap, the necklace glowing bright and golden between them.

When they finally pulled apart, Sarkan cleared his throat. “It works,” he whispered hoarsely.

Agnieszka smiled and kissed his cheek, his jaw. “Will that happen every time?”

Sarkan nestled his face in the crook of her neck and chuckled.

* * *

The Wood was no longer corrupted by hatred and grief, but even an ordinary forest was dangerous enough in the winter. Snow lay in thick drifts beneath the trees and dark shapes stalked between them, whining with cold and hunger.

Agnieszka had been walking for two days. After transporting herself to her cottage, she had set out on foot, wandering aimlessly in the direction of the center of the forest. She had yet to see a single promising fern, and with just a few hours left until midnight, she was running out of time.

A pile of snow slipped off of a pine bough and directly onto Agnieszka’s head, making her jump and then shiver. The powdery ice found its way into her hair and onto her nose, which already stung with cold. She swiped at her face with her hands, shook off her hood, and gave a scowl that would make Sarkan pause as she stepped over a fallen branch.

“Sarkan,” she snapped, keeping her gaze on a spindly figure off in the trees to her right that could have been a Walker or could have been an especially lean wolf. A pallid image of the wizard appeared like an icy reflection suspended in the air before her. He sat in his chair in the library, one hand resting on the open pages of a book in his lap while he stared into the fire. The fingers of his other hand tapped restlessly on the table at his side, where a cup of tea and the night-blue candle sat. His expression was slack and unguarded—slightly sad, Agnieszka thought, although it was hard to tell. Her focus was still on picking her way through the frozen undergrowth.

“Sarkan,” she said again, and he started and swore.

“Why didn’t you light the candle?” he asked irritably, snapping his book shut. “And will you stop walking while we speak? You look as though you’re about to march right into the library.” His voice was hoarse but it had returned.

“The moment I stop walking is the moment I’m pounced on by whatever’s following me,” Agnieszka grumbled. “And for the record, I’m tempted to come back. You look a lot warmer than I am.”

Sarkan’s mouth thinned as he peered behind her into the trees. “Are you in danger?”

“Not imminently.”

“ _Nieshka_.”

“ _Sarkan_ ,” she muttered, imitating his tone. “Where am I supposed to find these flowers, anyway?”

“Look for a clearing, a gulley—I don’t know, hold on.” He stepped out of Agnieszka’s field of view for a moment before returning with a book: an ancient, cloth-bound volume, stained with the ink and candlewax of dozens of previous owners. Sarkan flipped through the pages, long fingers moving dexterously, and Agnieszka smiled a little to herself at the sight. Two days was by no means the longest they had been apart—sometimes, they would spend a week or two buried in their own work despite the fact that they were both in the Valley before remembering the existence of the outside world and reuniting—but something about this ephemeral image of Sarkan, safe and warm and altogether distant, was bittersweet.

Agnieszka’s thoughts were interrupted by a loud rustling to her left. She stopped abruptly.

“Is everything all right?”

She held up a silencing hand, but Sarkan could only contain himself for a few seconds. “If you’re in danger—”

Agnieszka yanked at the thread of magic that had been feeding the necklace’s projection, severing it. Sarkan’s image faded into darkness. She crouched, feeling the cold seeping through her woolen stockings and not caring.

Whatever had made that noise was large. She had distinctly heard it snap a thick branch on the forest floor, but at the same time it had knocked a great quantity of snow from the trees above to the ground. That meant it was tall—at least eight, nine feet—and _heavy_. She peered into the darkness, trying to find any movement that might be caught by the moonlight.

Sarkan’s necklace flared golden and she stuffed it into her dress, but not quickly enough; the thing to her left was crashing through the bushes now, coming quickly towards her, and Agnieszka sprang to her feet and ran into the darkness. Through the haze of panic and the pain of low branches whipping her face, she could hear the creature following after her, its heavy footfalls landing with enough time between them to tell her that nine feet had been a conservative estimate of its height.

The necklace glowed brighter still, and Agnieszka tugged it off of her neck and held it in front of her to illuminate her path. She sprang over branches, dodged shrubs, nearly lost her footing as she slid across a narrow stream, frozen solid in the winter chill. The pendant swung wildly in her hand, causing shadows to waver and leap in her path. Even so, the light allowed her to sprint faster than she could in the dark, so she pushed with all the force her legs could muster and panted a cantrip of swiftness.

Soon she was rushing through the forest with dizzying speed; the twigs that grazed her face were slicing the skin now, leaving warm blood to run down her cheeks and back towards her ears. She shut her eyes for just a moment to try and clear the sting of it running into her eyes, and her stomach leapt into her mouth as her next footfall met open air—and the next, and the next, her legs pumping uselessly. The necklace flew through the air in a graceful arc as she let go, hands grasping reflexively for any kind of hold.

Before she could so much as utter a few words to cushion her fall, she landed hard on a snowy slope and began sliding downwards. Dark, leafy shapes rushed past, but otherwise her rapid descent was not interrupted until she came to a stop at the bottom of the hill. She heaved a massive sigh, horribly aware of both the complete darkness and the cold that clawed at her lungs, and scrambled around to look behind her.

The necklace had fallen just a few feet away, but its light was dim and flickering. Agnieszka scooped it out of the snow to see that it had landed on a rock; the glass was cracked, and the light inside was dying like a stray ember. Panic returned in full force as she realized that her only lifeline to the Tower was broken. She pressed it against her lips, more out of desperation than any real hope, and jerked away as it flared with one last burst of light and then shattered, leaving her panting in the dark.

She looked up the hill down which she had fallen and froze. There, outlined against the starry sky, was a massive figure as tall as Danka’s two-story cottage in Dvernik. It stood on two legs and its two arms, thick around as trees, hung at its sides. Branching from its head was a thicket of antlers that extended to an impressive wingspan. The thing seemed to be staring directly at her.

So these were the dangers of which Sarkan had spoken—the entities of the forest who came out to guard the fern flowers on the solstice. Agnieszka took a cautious step back as she slipped the broken necklace into the pocket of her cloak. If she could slip away into the trees—if she could run all through the night, get close enough to the Valley to use the transport spell, collapse down in the library and be grateful for Sarkan’s scolding before drawing him into her arms and relishing the safety of it—

A golden glow illuminated in front of her, and for a desperate moment, Agnieszka thought that it was the necklace, miraculously repaired, but when she looked down she was startled to see a flower that she had barely avoided crushing. It hung on the end of a long, curling shoot, almost brushing the ground.

“Fern flower,” Agnieszka whispered out loud, before tearing her gaze away from the plant to look back up to where she had seen the beast on the hill. It was gone; above the tree line, the starry sky was unobstructed. Still, her body was wound tight with nervous tension, and she strained to hear any noise in the stillness.

Another flower suddenly blossomed into light a few feet away, this one a vivid sapphire blue—then another, pale lavender, and a fourth that was a weak sunlight yellow. Petals unfurled on plants around the clearing, causing the snow to glitter and shine in their soft light. Agnieszka forced her breathing to slow and spared a moment to murmur a spell of warmth now that the clearing was fully illuminated. The snow packed into her collar melted and steamed away; her fingers creaked as they thawed; blood rushed back into her toes and her stockings dried. Then, with one last wary look behind her, she crouched to examine the flower.

It was a beautiful, delicate thing, with stacked rows of petals that were almost translucent. The light seemed to come from a single source at the center of the flower rather than from every part of it. When she touched it lightly with a fingertip, it curled in on itself and faded to darkness before crumbling to ash.

 _Shake it from the stem, don’t try to pick it_ , Sarkan had rasped, pointing to a passage in one of his books, and Agnieszka moved to another flower as the memory flooded back. This time, she cradled one hand below the flower and gently tapped the stem with the other. The radiant purple blossom broke free and settled light, almost weightless, on her palm.

A wordless roar shook the clearing and Agnieszka spun to see the beast from before, staring her down from across the little field of ferns, lit from beneath by the multicolored glow. It had a face like a snarling bull beneath its tangle of antlers, its body thick and covered in coarse grey hair. Hot air steamed from its nostrils when it snorted and narrowed its eyes—Agnieszka recognized that look from a childhood spent around cattle. It meant _get out of the way_.

Fern flower cradled in her grasp, Agnieszka bolted to her feet and took off into the trees as fast as her frozen legs could carry her. The thing was still behind her, tramping through the dense underbrush, wading assuredly through the snow, and if she could just go a little faster—

She skidded back into the clearing, though she knew she had been running in a straight line. Of course there was more than one kind of magic guarding this place. Agnieszka’s technical knowledge may have been limited, even after several years of Sarkan’s exasperated influence, but she knew the Wood. She knew that its depths held enchantments that had lain undisturbed since even before the Wood Queen’s people had made their home there; since the trees themselves had sprouted, in all likelihood. This hollow was a trap of the same sort as the claw-mouthed plants she had seen kept as curiosities in the palace: nonmalevolent and natural, only concerned with capturing any unwitting creature that wandered in.

The thing was close behind her, so she called out into the darkness under the trees. “I mean no harm! I will not harm the forest! I have taken only a single flower!” The creature snorted again, incensed, and the ground began to shake with its approach.

The sensation of the snow trembling beneath her feet was familiar, and she remembered her last desperate escape from the Wood. There was no time to remove her socks and boots; she cried “ _Hulvad!_ ” and everything beneath her skirt melted away, leaving her bare legs exposed and calf-deep in crystalline snow.

Agnieszka curled her toes and scraped away at the powder, hands still wrapped around the glimmering fern flower. There—a touch of dirt, just enough to press her numb feet against while she shouted “ _Fulmia!_ ” until the clearing rumbled and shook.

The approaching footsteps slowed but did not stop. Worse, the fern flowers, shaken loose by the earth’s tremors, began to wink into darkness, snuffing out the only source of light. “ _Fulmia!_ ” Agnieszka shouted again, and again the only result was a dimming of the light at her back.

There wasn’t much time left before she would be caught out in the open, vulnerable in the dark, and her mind raced for another solution. If only she still had the necklace, if only she could call Sarkan for help, if only he had come with her—

And in her longing for Sarkan’s magic, she found her mouth forming the illusion spell. She raced through it, breathless, imagining the paper-dry scent of the library and the looks he would give her over the top of his book if she was there with him, and then he was there. Not quite solid, not quite real, but real enough to gasp in startled relief when he saw her. He reached out for her with both hands and Agnieszka poured every drop of her magic into making the working torrential and powerful. As soon as his upturned palms seemed the slightest bit corporeal, she dropped the fern flower into them—he tossed it onto a nearby table with significantly less delicacy than was usual for him—he reached back for her, his expression openly urgent, hands stretched so far that the light snowfall that had started up in the forest was landing and melting on his skin.

Agnieszka leapt forward and he grabbed her arms in a painfully tight grasp. They tumbled together onto the floor of the library and Agnieszka twisted to look back through the window. She had just traveled farther than she ever had using that trick, and she was still bleeding magic as though from a wound; she was barely able to staunch the flow, but not before Sarkan hissed a breath at the sight of the creature peering through the enchanted doorway. The hole winked out of existence and Agnieszka sank down, head spinning, barely aware that Sarkan was pulling her tight against him.

“Ridiculous, _ridiculous_ ,” he was muttering into her hair when she regained some semblance of awareness, his thumb shakily wiping the blood from her face and knitting closed her scratches.

“What _was_ that?” Agnieszka wheezed.

Sarkan shifted so that he was sitting upright and Agnieszka was leaning back against him, still held in place by his tight embrace. She could feel his heart racing in his chest. “A bies—a guardian of the forest. Usually quite malevolent. That—I’ve never seen one that large before. Sometimes they disguise themselves and—and trick people into making bad deals, but that one—that one could have torn you limb from limb.”

A chuckle tore its way out of Agnieszka’s throat. “I see why you still don’t like the Wood.”

“That thing is much older than the Wood Queen was,” he agreed grumpily. “I knew it was a bad idea for you to go alone.”

Agnieszka turned in his arms so that she could return the embrace, and they sat on the library floor like that for some time, both trembling slightly while he carded his hand through her damp hair and the fire murmured itself down to embers.

“I was trying to track your magic,” he whispered eventually. “After the candle exploded, I knew something was wrong. I was trying to find evidence of one of your workings, and when I couldn’t find anything— _feel_ anything—I thought—I was, was worried—”

Agnieszka silenced his uncharacteristic stammering with a kiss, hard and urgent, which he returned in kind. She had to break away sooner than she wished because her head was beginning to spin again—or was it the room, turning slightly and wobbling as it did?

“I’m back, I’m all right,” she whispered against his lips, punctuated by an involuntary, shaky sigh. “I’m all right.” Then she thought of something and sat up, brow furrowed.  
“Did you say that the candle exploded?”

Sarkan pointed behind her to the table by his chair, where several large chunks of wax looked like they had been blasted apart from the wick. Indeed, it looked as though the entire wick had ignited at once—possibly a result of the last, fragmented working transmitted from the necklace, fractured by the broken focus.

Tossed haphazardly into the chair itself were a scarf, a heavy cloak, a short wooden staff, the book on fern flowers and Jaga’s journal, and three potions (one of which Agnieszka recognized as a tiny vial of fire-heart).

“You were about to come after me, tracking or no tracking,” Agnieszka observed. She turned back to meet Sarkan’s glittering black gaze. He still had yet to freeze his expression into one of careful detachment; she could read his concern there, and exhaustion, too, in his pallor and the dark circles beneath his eyes from days of illness.

He coughed and looked away. “I was waiting for you to contact me so that I could follow the enchantment on the necklace. I hoped to find you before tonight, but this was the first evening that I felt strong enough to try.” He looked up at her again. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t fast enough.”

“Oh, hush.”

Sarkan raised an eyebrow. “What—”

“We agreed that I would go alone, it’s not your fault you got sick. Nor is it your fault that we underestimated what might be waiting for me. I’m back and I have the flower, both thanks to you.” She managed a smile. “Have you been drinking the soup?”

He huffed. “No, I’ve been eating dirt off the floor—of course I’ve been drinking the soup.”

Agnieszka snorted. “You won’t even pretend that you can cook for yourself? Sometimes I think that all that talk about Spindle-water was nonsense, that you only took girls from the Valley because you’d have starved to death without them.”

Sarkan opened his mouth to retort but they were both startled when a log settled in the fire. Both tightened their grip on the other, heads swiveling to identify the noise, and both laughed shakily when they found it.

“The flower won’t wilt now that it’s been brought out of the Wood,” Sarkan said into the silence. Agnieszka knew what he meant; _let’s not worry about that now_. And she agreed.

Gently, careful not to collapse forward on top of him in her tiredness, Agnieszka pushed Sarkan back to lie down on the floor. “ _Vanastalem_ ,” she whispered, making the word thick and soft, and layers of soft fabric wrapped around them both. She sank to the floor with a sigh.

Sarkan understood at once and pulled her close against him, angling them both to feel the heat of the fire. “Nieshka,” he murmured, burying his face in her hair once more, and she smiled.


End file.
